(Not) A Guilty Pleasure: Raptor

You don't really care who made this, and to be honest, neither do I. So instead here's a snarky rebuttal to the above poster about stock footage never being extinct either.

No "Guilty Pleasure Quality" this time. I really hate this movie. Only in the category for consistency's sake.

I’m really not sure how to introduce Raptors, the 2001 spin-off film following the Carnosaur Trilogy. Other than that it’s low production values and mindless casting were even too much for me, as I’m knocking this film out of The Guilty Pleasures. That’s right. It was so bad I couldn’t even enjoy it as cheap and silly entertainment. The way it was shot, the way the actors walked, and the clues to major cop-outs later on down the film just turned me off from the very beginning. I would say that Roger Corman should have stay Executive Producer rather than moving to Producer for the film, but that would suggest the other Carnosaur films were any good. Raptors was just as bad but simply far less enjoyable.

I shouldn’t be criticized for not knowing how to introduce such a film, as even the filmmakers didn’t even seem to know how to introduce the movie. So rather than trying, they simply re-used footage from the first Carnosaur film to show a bunch of teens in a Jeep getting slaughtered by the dinosaur. In fact, much of the story is recycling a lot of elements from the first film simply so the filmmakers could reuse old footage when needed to cut down on production costs. The plot revolves around a mad scientist trying to clone dinosaurs back to life. Sound familiar? (I’m not even referring to Jurassic Park.)

The Guilty Pleasures Pile: Carnosaur 3

Science-Fiction/Action; 85 minutes; U.S.; Directed by: Jonathan Winfrey; Produced by: Roger Corman; New Horizon Home Entertainment

Actual Quality

Guilty Pleasure Quality

After the delightful abominations that were Carnosaur 1 & 2, Rodger Corman rolls out yet another dinosaur flick within the same year of the 1994 sequel, entitled Carnosaur 3. And yes, it even follows the same group of dinosaurs that were human-bred into the world in the first movie. I’m not sure how these dinosaurs kept surviving. I mean, after the nuclear blast that capped off movie #2 these dinosaurs seem to be more radiation-blast proof than Indiana Jones in that 2009 movie. And yet they’re still prone to die when hit by things like bullets and smaller explosives, again like Indiana Jones in that 2009 movie.

Oh well…

A small group of Caucasian terrorists (I have to make a distinction in light of the Taliban, who don’t make an appearance in this movie) steal some sorely guarded trucks of Uranium protected via the U.S. Military. (Nice job, Military.) The Uranium was en route to somewhere else, (does it really matter where at this point?*) which made it an easy target for terrorists dressed in black ninja suits in broad daylight. I guess the terrorists were so good that they don’t need the cover of night to camoflauge in their black suits. I mean, if they can take on the U.S. Military and win then they MUST be good.

(*Sorry for all of the intrusive parentheticals. They will appear only as often as needed in this review. Play a game and count how many times they appear in this review if it helps.)

The Guilty Pleasure Pile: Carnosaur 2

Science Fiction, Action; 1994; 83 minutes; U.S.; Directed by: Louis Monaeu; Produced by: Mike Elliot; Executive Produced by: Roger Corman; The Pacific Trust; New Horizons Home Video

Actual Quality

Guilty Pleasure Quality

In 1993, Roger Corman’s Carnosaur compared itself greatly to Jurassic Park, which in turned showed signs that Spielberg was more directly inspired by Comran to come into the world of executive producer and increasing his quantity of film in his filmography. It was a rather unlikely turn of events, but it happened. Elements from Carnosaur were even taken and placed in a mock script for Jurassic Park IV, which greatly infuriated fans in 2003 when they thought that it was the actual production script for the film; a film which never came came to realization in any form of production as of yet.

Corman quickly went into production with the sequel simply titled Carnosaur 2 much faster than Spielberg came to production with his sequel film The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In fact, the film was released in 1994, only roughly one year after the release of the both the first Carnosaur and Jurassic Park films and 3 years before Spielberg would release his Jurassic Park sequel in 1997. Despite Corman’s film again starring dinosaurs, the film’s creative team decided to take a different approach to their sequel film by “paying homage” to the techniques and films of director of James Cameron, specifically his 1986 film Aliens and 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Carnosaur is a sequel ripping off both an Alien sequel and a Terminator sequel, and was released during the announcement of a Jurassic Park sequel. Considering the first installments to all of these three franchises, that’s a scope of at least 8 movies. And that’s not considering the other sequels that all four of these franchises later put into production. Could this review get anymore crowded?

The Guilty Pleasures Pile: Carnosaur

Science Fiction; U.S.; 1993; 83 minutes; written and directed by: Adam Simon; based on the novel by: Harry Adam Knight; produced by: Mike Elliot; Executive produced by: Roger Corman; New Horizon Home Video

Actual Quality

Guily Pleasure Quality

There are some movies that defy all thought and predictions. Films that go beyond the boundaries set for them by their contemporaries. Films that literally boldly go where no respectable person has gone before. (Mainly because respectable people know better.) These are films that are so bad they’re good. You laugh at they’re vain attempts to make you care, the silly ideas that are meant to scare you, and performances that no one, not even the actors and director, seemed to know what they were going for.These are the films that find themselves in our Guilty Pleasures Pile, and though many on this film blog have already thrown stuff into the pile, I’m going to make my first contribution in a while to the stash with a little mockbuster film Roger Corman executive produced en lure of Jurassic Park called Carnosaur. In fact, it’s fun to see how these two franchises kept butting into each other’s territory.

Corman was known in the olden days as the director who looked for one thing from his actors and one thing only: Stand on the tape mark, you turd. Actually, he was a wonderful guy to work with and lot of fun, but you had to hit your marks. He didn’t care what your line sounded like, he didn’t care how you did what you did… he just wanted you to stand on the tape mark and say your piece so he can say “cut”.

The Guilty Pleasure Pile: My Wife is 18

Ekin Cheng in a rare non-preening face deals with the multi-faceted energy of Charlene Choi

Generally Speaking, we at Forced Perspective love great films and detest bad films. But what happens when one of us grows fond of a film that we know in our hearts is total crap? This is where we stash such films: The Guilty Pleasure Pile.

Several months ago in the inaugural post from The Guilty Pleasure Pile, I confessed my love for the masterpiece of marketing, Dante Lam’s The Twins Effect. Now, I turn my attention to another silly, fluffy film, the romantic comedy My Wife is 18, which actually just so happens to star both Ekin Cheng and Charlene Choi (the taller Twin) from my previous guilty pleasure. In fact, many of my guilty pleasures star either Ekin Cheng and/or one or both of the Twins, but I promise in the future I’ll try and cover something that people who don’t know every last detail about the Hong Kong film industry will actually care about.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser

A shirtless man is fondling a brass puzzle box whose idea of “No means no” involves spewing out flesh-piercing chains. The attic room he occupied fils with dangling hooks and spinning pillars adorned with flesh. The man, who we will soon learn goes by the name Frank Cotton, is reduced to a few gallons of blood soaking the woodwork, his face strewn about the room in chunks. Another man steps out of the dark. He is dressed in leather that stylishly draws attention to his various abdominal wounds. He is almost a silhoutte, but the light drifting down over the back of his hairless, ghost white flesh exposes a grid carved into his head, with a pin hammered into his skull at each intersecting line. He places the chunks of Frank’s mutilated face back together, in a jigsaw, and caresses the surface of the box. In a flash, all the chains and gore are gone, leaving the room as barren as if nobody was ever there.

The Guilty Pleasure Pile: Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive-In Theater

You know you respect the Drive-In.

I don’t know if I could call myself a “freaky film fan” if it weren’t for cult films. The campy, terrific fun of those movies are a great source of film in-jokes, good ideas gone bad, and some insight into the young culture starving for their style of entertainment before the reform of Hollywood in the 1960’s.

What’s even better is when these cult classics are being showed by loving fans of these movies in a way that celebrates in the campiness of these movies. And generally, the more obscure the group of fans, the better.

The Guilty Pleasure Pile: The Twins Effect

Generally Speaking, we at Forced Perspective love great films and detest bad films. But what happens when one of us grows fond of a film that we know in our hearts is total crap? This is where we stash such films: The Guilty Pleasure Pile.

Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi slay vampires and keep up with the latest fashion.

For our inaugural film from the heap, I’ll be looking at Dante Lam’s 2003 film The Twins Effect. For the uninitiated, the Twins (Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi) became one of Hong Kong’s most ridiculously popular music acts in the early naughts. While in Hollywood it isn’t uncommon for a pop star to take a turn to the silver screen, in Hong Kong it’s practically expected. In fact, many of Hong Kong’s most popular and beloved actors also have music careers. Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Jackie Chan (who has an extended cameo in this film), and Leslie Cheung (possibly the best actor Hong Kong has ever seen) are all well known for their music as well as their film roles.